Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [31]
“Mother’s feelin’ better and better,” I tell Mrs. Kenfield as Troo disappears down aisle two. What is she doing? Kleenex for flowers is in aisle four. “Gettin’ stronger and stronger by the minute.”
Mrs. Kenfield says, “Glad to hear Helen’s on the mend,” but she doesn’t sound it and I don’t blame her. I don’t care what the Bible says about loving your neighbors more than you love yourself. I think it’s hard to even like people when your own family is going belly-up the way ours was last summer. You can’t help but wish you had what they had.
The reason she’s so grumpy is because her husband, Mr. Chuck Kenfield, is going down the drain. His daughter, Dottie, the one he used to wail over and maybe still does, had some of the sex when she was still in high school. She got pregnant so he had to send her away to a special home in Chicago to live with some other girls who did the same thing. What Dottie was supposed to do was have her baby and leave it there for somebody who was married to come by and pick it up so she could go back to her regular life, but that’s not what happened. Grown-ups gossip about this after Mass all the time. Dottie’s disappearance is still piping hot news because she snuck out of the Chicago hospital when the nurses weren’t looking, so now it’s both her and the baby that’re missing. I heard she had a little girl.
The reason Dottie had to go away like that to Chicago is because around here it’s a mortal sin to do what she did. I think the Kenfields just should’ve packed up and moved to another neighborhood. Or maybe Dottie could’ve done what Nell did when she got knocked up last summer by Eddie Callahan. Get married when nobody is paying attention. When the baby came out of the oven in April instead of June, Dottie could tell nosy buttinskis that her kid is just a real go-getter. “Early bird gets the worm!” is what Nell chirped to visitors until Troo told her to shut the hell up.
Missing Dottie, that’s why Mr. Kenfield has become so sloshy that Mrs. Kenfield has to run the Five and Dime all by herself now. You can tell that being on her feet all day is hard on her. She has gotten very close veins in her legs. She doesn’t complain out loud, of course not. The Kenfields are English. They are a people who like to keep a stiff upper lip, which means they don’t like to show you any of what they are feeling. I see them in the movies. They usually wear clothes that are clean and full of starch, but I’m positive this is the same shirtwaist Mrs. Kenfield had on the last time we were up here and the part in her hair looks like a dandruff plantation and she’s got pimples on her chin that she put some Clearasil on and forgot to wash off this morning.
I’m about to ask the same exact question I always do when I come up here. Even though her husband and me don’t spend a lotta time together the way we used to, outta sight does not mean outta mind for me. I still think of him often as my good friend. “How has Mr. Kenfield been?”
Wiping the glass counter even harder, Mrs. Kenfield says, “I’ll tell him that you asked after him, Sally.” That’s what she always says.
“Oh, don’t bother,” I say, coming up with something else I can put in my charitable summer story. “I’ve been plannin’ to stop by one of these nights so we can talk on the porch swing like we did last—”
“Don’t you dare!” Mrs. Kenfield practically bites my head off. “You remind him of . . . I mean . . .” She swallows and says quieter, “That wouldn’t be a good idea. Chuck . . . Mr. Kenfield has been feeling under the weather. I wouldn’t want you to catch what he’s got.”
I would have to agree with her.
“Hellooo!”
A new customer breezes into the Five and Dime on shiny red high-heeled shoes, seamed nylons, a skirt higher than